


Snapshots of a Tale Twice-Told

by HeraldAros



Series: Oneshots, AUs, and Other Assorted Fics [4]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: (...I do have some ideas about Desmond!Sora and wtf is up with Riku though), ...not gonna call this idea DONE or ABANDONED but I have no distinct plans for it, Alternate Universe - Assassin's Creed Fusion, Aqua is a Roman Master Assassin, Assassin!Kairi, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Subject 16!Naminé, Xion has shades of Lucy Stillman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 16:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17584589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeraldAros/pseuds/HeraldAros
Summary: Kairi, Master Assassin (vicariously, through Aqua), the echoes of Naminé (who went into the Animus first and left clues for Kairipersonally), and a rescuer in a black hood.





	Snapshots of a Tale Twice-Told

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this out to get it out of my head, but I feel like my 2009 self is shouting a warning about feeding plot bunnies. (To this point: I wrote 370 words, started making this AO3 posting, then went back and added the other _nine hundred words_.) 
> 
> If anyone wants to drop a request for a scene or character you'd like to see in this AU, hit me up; I can't make any promises, but I've got a good few unformed ideas just kinda spinning in the void. I'll probably drop ficbits in here as they come to me, but I have no idea when or how often that'll be.

The black-hooded figure waves at Kairi, sleeves deep enough to hide the glint of metal at their wrist. There’s a way to hold the wrist, the arm, to disguise the weight there, but novices take _forever_ to learn the knack. As Master, she’d ordered all the novices to wear theirs at all times, to accustom them to it.

That hadn’t been her most popular order, but it wasn’t her least popular, either.

…Not hers. Master Aqua’s.

Kairi swings her legs over the edge of the Animus, not quite ready to trust her weight on them. Mediterranean tang fills her nose, the creak of a ship in her ears; the _Tempest_ is a beauty of a ship, big enough to give pirates pause even when Aqua can’t risk flying the Roman Republic’s colors. Sea legs on land are no good at all, and Kairi has enough experience now to pause, gauge her own strength, and proceed only when she’s sure of herself.

The black-hooded figure makes an impatient noise, but Kairi ignores them. A good Master listens to the novices, yes, but doesn’t for a second let the novices confuse listening with giving in or following orders. Some branches of the Order are more lenient than others, but there’s a clear hierarchy in them all.

She taps into the Light; Naminé’s warnings have served her well so far, and it only seems right to bid what’s left of the girl goodbye. Hopefully this is all that’s left of Naminé. If she’s still here, if the Organization still has her, Kairi will pry the girl’s corpse out of this building, but even she knows there won’t be much more than that left. Naminé is a unique convergence-point, someone with _so many_ different genetic strands that the Organization must have salivated when they found her DNA profile. Genetically close enough to Sora to be siblings, and a lot easier for the Organization to get their hands on.

Kneeling down before the first picture she’d found — a nostalgic depiction of herself, Sora, and Riku, back before the Organization, before the Order, before ancestors and betrayals and memories and genetics pried them apart and sent them scattering to the winds — Kairi presses her forehead to the floor, hiding her face from the cameras Naminé marked for her.

“Thank you, Sister,” she mouths. “I won’t waste it.”

///

Kairi at eighteen had skinny arms, a careless beach tan, and an intense desire to figure out where she came from, biologically speaking.

Kairi at twenty is toned (Bleeding Effect, the Organization claimed, from Aqua’s _ludicrous_ daily regimen), almost paler than the earliest pictures of her (post-adoption), and far too knowledgeable about where all her biology has been.

She knows her way around a dozen outdated weapons. She remembers waking up in less-than-ideal situations; sometimes with a throbbing head, or the blurry vision and nausea of drugs; sometimes bound, chained, or just locked in. She can swim a league, scale a palace’s walls, speak a handful of languages and a double-handful of coded phrases and gestures besides, locate the best place to stab a mark to escape unseen, blend into a crowd of noble ladies or courtesans or mercenaries or merchants’ wives.

The Organization’s fondness for sterile white walls grounds her firmly in the present. Her guide is slim, young, riddled with tells; there must be someone managing the security system, but that hooded head clocks every camera, hidden or not, telegraphing so badly that Kairi wants to take the lead herself.

She was brought in unconscious. The building might as well be a labyrinth; a map unfurls in her head, but most of it is blank, awaiting further information.

No guards. Taken out by her rescuer’s backup, or just the Organization’s comical arrogance? In Aqua’s time, there was no underestimating the enemy; every mistake on the Order’s part was ruthlessly exploited, and the Assassins returned the favor with vicious enthusiasm. Think your enemy was safely trapped in a dungeon? Well, hopefully you didn’t care much about that stronghold.

Aqua was good at it, but Zaccharias — Zack — could disarm a fort with nothing but a grin.

Kairi doesn’t have that knack. (Sora does. Did. Maybe still does?) She has to make do with seeming small, weak, innocent. She worked her Organization handlers over until they well and truly thought she was an airheaded doll of a girl.

(There are no windows in the Animus room, in the bathroom, in her bedroom, but Naminé tracked the patrol schedules, left cryptic clues in her childish drawings, messages that only someone with the Light could read. Messages for Kairi. Messages about Sora, about Riku.)

The guide pulls her to a stop in front of an elevator, pries it open using an attachment on the wristblade that Kairi eyes with interest. Some kind of crowbar? But what’s it made of, to be that size and that portable and still get the doors, protesting mightily, to open?

“Can you climb?” the guide asks, voice high and young. More feminine than masculine, and shaking. Adrenaline? Stress? Fear?

Kairi doesn’t let herself be afraid. (She’s been afraid since she woke up, drugged, and a man in a coat like her rescuer’s told her what the Animus was, what it could do. She hasn’t been afraid since the first time she opened her eyes and realized she wasn’t alone: she’d brought a piece of Aqua with her, and Aqua brought her the Light, and Naminé.) She examines the shaft, then swings herself inside, hands wrapping around a cable.

The Animus didn’t give her friction, didn’t give her sweat on her palms or her heartbeat thudding in her ears. “Up or down?” she asks, already starting to climb.

Assassins like heights, leaps of faith. She can’t imagine that’s changed over the centuries.

“Keep going all the way to the top,” her rescuer says, and Kairi pauses when she realizes she’s alone in the dark.

She glances down. The rescuer tips her head up, hood falling back. They could be twins.

“I have to get some others out,” Kairi’s maybe-twin says. “You can take it from here, right?”

Of course. Kairi stifles her kneejerk reaction; Aqua would never let a novice stay behind to cover her retreat, let alone to finish a mission while Aqua got away. Still, she hesitates. “Who’s still here?”

The girl’s mouth twists. “Too many people. Don’t worry about it. You need to make sure you’re safe.”

A beat. No mechanical sounds in the shaft — has this girl’s backup disabled the elevators, or just stalled them? No fire alarms going off, so that can’t be it; on the one hand, they might have escaped notice so far, on the other hand, Kairi doesn’t relish the idea of becoming an elevator pancake.

“I promised Naminé,” the girl adds. “You need to go.”

If Naminé is still in the building, Kairi will come back and level it. There must be some modern equivalent to salting the earth; she’ll find it, she’ll use it.

Since she woke up strapped to the Animus, Aqua and Naminé have been her sole friends. One of them is centuries-dead and taught her how to take an enemy force apart; the other one made sure Kairi knew she wasn’t alone, made Kairi feel _understood_ , and may need all those skills Kairi’s learned.

She doesn’t say any of that. If anyone would plant cameras or recording equipment in a random elevator shaft, it would be the Organization. She just nods and applies her climbing skills to the task at hand.

All the way to the top. Leaving is a leap of faith, but by now, Kairi has experience with those.


End file.
